David Cale

David Cale, born David Egleton in England in 1958 or 1959, is an English-American playwright, actor, and songwriter who grew up in Luton, Bedfordshire. After leaving secondary school without completing his studies, he attempted a career as a rock singer in London before changing his name and relocating to New York City in 1979. His early writing took the form of song lyrics, which he began presenting at poetry readings before they evolved into monologues. His only prior theatrical experience had been as a stagehand.

Cale launched his solo stage career in 1986 at PS 122 in New York with The Redthroats, in which he played a semi-autobiographical character named Stephen Weird. The production earned a Bessie Award and was later featured in an HBO special. Following a national tour, he brought the show to Chicago's Goodman Theatre, establishing a long-running relationship with that institution, which went on to present and commission numerous works from him. His next piece, Smooch Music, opened in 1987 at The Kitchen in New York and featured a live score by jazz musician Roy Nathanson. Nathanson also contributed music to Cale's subsequent work, Deep in a Dream of You, a collection of character monologues that premiered at the Goodman and received a 1991 Joseph Jefferson Award nomination for New Work. New York performances followed at The Knitting Factory and The Public Theater, with those two productions together earning another Bessie Award.

Somebody Else's House, Cale's next collection of character sketches, addressed themes of homosexuality and social marginalization. One sketch within it, centered on a London woman who begins a relationship with a younger man, became the foundation for his play Lillian, which premiered at the Goodman in 1997. The 1998 New York production of Lillian at Playwrights Horizons won an Obie Award Special Citation, and the play was also broadcast on This American Life. Two further monologue collections, Betwixt — the first time Cale performed his own work alongside another actor, Cara Seymour — and A Likely Story, premiered in New York in the 2000s. In 2005, Cale returned to the Goodman for Floyd and Clea Under the Western Sky, his first non-monologue production, for which he wrote the book and lyrics and performed the lead role. The musical was subsequently nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical in New York.

Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut commissioned The Blue Album for its 2006–2007 season as a collaboration between Cale and playwright Dael Orlandersmith, with both performers playing characters they each wrote for themselves, and Cale also contributing songs. Palomino, about an Irish immigrant in Central Park who works as a carriage driver and becomes a gigolo, opened in 2010 at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre and toured the West Coast. Cale had worked as a carriage driver himself while researching a film role. The History of Kisses followed in 2011 at Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C.

In 2017, Cale created Harry Clarke as a co-production between New York's Vineyard Theatre and Audible, with the stage production and audiobook both performed by Billy Crudup. The play tells the story of a Midwesterner who reinvents himself as a British libertine and represents a rare instance of Cale writing monologue work for another actor. The audiobook also features Cale performing Lillian. Harry Clarke won a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show. That same year, Cale's solo show Fluffing for Beginners appeared at Dixon Place in New York. We're Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time, which Cale described as his most directly autobiographical work, depicting his childhood in Luton, premiered at the Goodman in 2018 and subsequently played The Public Theater in New York in 2019. Also in 2018, Cale and musician Matthew Dean Marsh began a monthly concert residency at New York's Pangea Restaurant under the title More Songs for Charming Strangers. His play Sandra opened at the Vineyard Theatre in New York in 2022.

On Broadway, Cale appeared in productions between 1996 and 2006, with credits including the comedy Present Laughter and Threepenny Opera. As a stage actor outside his own work, he appeared in Curtains, which received a 1996 Obie Award for its entire acting ensemble. His screen work began with a role in Woody Allen's Radio Days in 1987, and he has since appeared in more than twenty films, including Ed Harris's 2000 biopic Pollock and James Gray's 2008 romantic drama Two Lovers. As a songwriter, Cale's original compositions have been recorded by artists including The Jazz Passengers, Debbie Harry, and Syd Straw.